Sturgeon does not represent all Scots

More than 400,000 of we Tories voted in Scotland at the last general election and were rewarded with a solitary MP and all we hear now from Nicola Sturgeon and friends of the SNP is how undemocratic it would be for a Conservative-led coalition to take power “without UK support”.

Once again Sturgeon is talking with a forked tongue. Where was she last time? Why didn’t we hear this nonsense then? The SNP got six MPs for gaining a similar number of votes as the Tories and I didn’t hear her cry foul then.

Chances are more people will vote Tory this time around and will end up without any representation in Scotland. Where are her tears for legitimacy for hundreds of thousands of her fellow Scots, or don’t we count because we’re not in her camp?

Are we the people she’d like to “lock out” of Scotland just as she’d like to “lock out” the Conservatives from Westminster? It’s almost racism; if the word “Tory” was replaced by any other descriptive term for people of these islands she’d be clapped in irons by now.

Stan Hogarth

Palmerston Place

Edinburgh

I find it sad that Nicola Sturgeon wants us to vote for her party so Scotland’s voice can be heard at Westminster. We have always had an MP for all our areas and they have always worked for their constituents.

We have an excellent Liberal MP whereas our SNP MSP has never even written a leaflet on matters concerning us since he was elected. It is the person working for us we respect, not the party. Could Miss Sturgeon show some respect to hard-working MPs and the intelligence of the electorate. She does not hold the monopoly of voices working for Scotland.

Doris Duff

Belmont Gardens

Edinburgh

Scottish politics – it’s a funny old world, isn’t it? Across Scotland on Thursday Lib Dem supporters may be voting Labour or perhaps Tory; Tory voters, if necessary, will flock to Labour or the Lib Dems. There’ll be the occasional Labour voter backing the Lib Dems or doing the hitherto unthinkable, and voting Tory.

Unionists realise they have to vote for whoever has the best chance of stopping the SNP. Opinion polls give Nicola Sturgeon the right to feel ebullient. But we may wake up on Friday morning to find more than a few Labour, Lib Dem and Tory seats in Scotland denied to the Nationalists by some very canny, tactical voting. Miss Sturgeon will then be forced to rethink her grandiose Westminster ambitions.

For the unionist voter, the decision is easy: country before party to defeat the SNP.

Martin Redfern

Royal Circus

Edinburgh

In this election, the SNP tells us that a party that does not have support in Scotland, but is in government at UK level, will have no legitimacy here (even although it is a UK election, and other parts of the UK periodically get governments they did not vote for).

Let us take this argument further. The SNP is the government at Holyrood – as parts of Scotland did not vote for the SNP (and remember, the turnout was only 50 per cent).

Does that make the SNP illegitimate in these parts?

William Ballantine

Dean Road

Bo’ness, West Lothian

Once again Nicola Sturgeon demonstrates the hypocrisy of her politics by claiming a Tory-led Westminster government would have no mandate to govern in Scotland.

What legitimacy does the SNP have to influence the government of voters outside Scotland when it has no seats at Westminster outside Scotland, and does not even contest any (unlike the other parties who do contest seats in Scotland, and therefore at least offer voters a choice).

Rory Laird

West Burnside

Dollar